A model for the production and publication of scholarly source editions

The production and publishing of editions is an old branch of scholarly activity. In earlier days, almost all sources were published in the form of books, often a series of books, but for the past quarter of a century, the digital edition (on cd of dvd or online) was not only established, but it has become the normal way of publishing sources. In this blogpost I want to present a model for scholarly source editions, that was developed for paper as well as digital editions.

The model distinguishes between different layers (optionally) involved in publishing an edition of historical sources. There is a number of different actions involved in the elaboration of a source to a published edition, that are indicated as layers. Sometimes it will be difficult to separate layers clearly from each other, but for analytical purposes it is important to distinguish them, because they all involve different steps in the processing of a resource. A few things should be noted beforehand:

• while there is a rough sequence in the steps, they do not depend on each other. For instance, a transcription may be made on basis of the original document or from a scan and the structuring of the data from the text does not depend on the availability of the text itself. Some of the layers could be subdivided
• in an actual edition all or an arbitrary selection of the layers may be present
• the choice which layers to use depends on the requirements and constraints of the context of methodological and economic considerations
• layers usually are complementary rather than alternatives
• some elaborations could fit in different layers. Usually one layer is more suited for an elaboration than another, though. For example visual features are more suited for visual treatment
• all steps involve selection of material and of features
• in each layer there are choices that may exclude each other. For instance, scanning or taking photos photo’s require decisions about resolutions, file formats and compression. For transcriptions, there are a number of different and mutually exclusive options.
• all layers contain elaboration steps that inevitably interpretations even if they try to stay close to the original. This is true for manual and automatic elaborations. Most automatic and manual elaborations are interchangeable, but for practical reasons.

The layers:

• Archive: availability of source material, the point of departure. Archive also stands for any other means of preservation of the sources, in libraries, in shoeboxes at an attic or in digital-born form. Which material is available, which sources will be elaborated (and in what way). This should also involve source criticism: an assessment of the provenance and the nature of the sources and their relation to previously existent sources (that may or may not have been lost), such as their place in the archive or a larger corpus they are contained in.
• Selection: which parts of the available source material will be part of the edition (and in what form). Selection in any form is inevitable and should be accounted for, preferably in relation to the larger corpus.
• Digitization: transfer of analog media to a digital form. This is usually done by scanning or photographing and also involves selection and choice of technical parameters.
• Description: Identifying the sources and assigning essential metadata to them. This should at least comprise the provenance data and an identification, that may take any form from an id-number to a urn. Identification is important within the context of the edition; trying to make this transcend into other domains (for instance by encoding the original signature into the edition id) makes ids vulnerable to changes beyond the control of the editor. The relation between other existent ids of the same source should therefore preferably be explicit. If there is a digital version of the source this should also describe the relation of the digital form to the original source.
• Transcription: transfer of the textual content of an object to a textual form following a set of rules. As for the other layers, choices in transcription methods are usually mutually exclusive.
• Text structuring: any structure added to the ‘plain’ text, meant to enrich the text with structural elements for any purpose, including paging, chapter division and many forms of XML-structuring.
• Annotation: that can usually be seen as a form of formal or content annotation mainly for scientific purposes. Is is often hard to draw a definite line between structuring and annotation. Annotation may be manual and by means of algorithms, including all sorts of tagging (such as Named Entity Recognition and Part of Speech Tagging).
• Structured data: structuring elements in text for the purpose of information gathering. This involves both normalization, identification and contextualization. Data Structuring often targets Named Entities, but may extend to all types of information, such as emotion words or events.
• Publication: publishing any mix of the layers mentioned above in print or digital form or on any other media or platform.

Written with StackEdit.

KNAW Symposium: Citizen Science. De betrokkenheid van burgers in het wetenschappelijke proces

Citizen Science is hot

De inzet van niet-wetenschappelijk publiek in wetenschappelijk projecten is 'hot' en kan veel wetenschappelijke projecten nieuwe horizons bieden. Dat was de teneur van de bijeenkomst over Citizen Science die vrijdag 16 juni voor een volle zaal plaatsvond bij de Academie van Wetenschappen. Het publiek bestond vooral uit wetenschapsbeoefenaars uit diverse wetenschappelijke richtingen en bestuurders, zo bleek uit een korte rondvraag aan het begin van de bijeenkomst, maar vertegenwoordigers van funding organizations waren er niet. Over de verschillende aspecten van Citizen Science werd uit gevarieerde ervaringen van biologische, medische, gezondheidszorg en letterkundige projecten verslag gedaan. Niet alleen de inhoudelijke, maar ook de organisatorische en financiële kanten werden belicht. Aan het eind van de middag onthulde KNAW voorzitter Jose van Dijk het platform Iedereen Wetenschapper.

Vormen 

Wat is Citizen Science eigenlijk? Organisator en inleider Tine de Moor ontweek een definitie, en de sprekers konden zich wel vinden in zo’n open opstelling, hoewel ze het toch ook wel eens waren dat niet alles onder Citizen Science kan vallen. Uit alle bijdragen bleek wel dat er verschillende ideeën bestaan over de bijdragen van publiek aan een project. Nicolien van der Sijs van het Meertens Instituut vatte het als volgt samen:

• Data verzamelen. Gebruikers leveren data doordat ze meten of activiteiten ontplooien. Voorbeelden: meten van fijnstof met de iPhone en het tellen van bodemdiertjes.
• Data verrijken. Gebruikers bewerken beschikbare data tot een vorm die verder wetenschappelijk bewerkt kan worden. Voorbeelden: transcriptie van ondertrouwgegevens in het Ja ik wil! project of van een van de projecten van het Meertens Instituut (Statenbijbel transcriptie, Brieven als Buit).
• Interactie tussen wetenschappers en een community. Voorbeelden: Gemeenschapsgezondheidszorg in Amsterdam Sloterdijk, patiënten platform als feedback voor de medische sector voor specifieke ziekten en behandelwijzen.
• Als laatste mogelijk vorm werd geopperd dat onderzoek of experimenten in samenspraak met de betrokken Citizen Scientist vormgegeven kan worden, maar hier waren geen voorbeelden van voorhanden.

Kwaliteit

Citizen Science is aangewakkerd door de tijdgeest aan de ene kant en de mogelijkheden van de informatie-technologie aan de andere. Nieuw is het eigenlijk niet, want er zijn veel voorbeelden van publicaties en projecten waaraan niet-wetenschappers deelnamen. Zoals te verwachten was, waren alle deelnemers erg te spreken over de inzet in hun projecten en de kwaliteit die dat oplevert. Uit publicitair oogpunt is publieksparticipatie ook belangrijk. Meer aarzeling was er over de vorm waarin de resultaten neergelegd moeten worden. Wetenschappers worden immers afgerekend op wetenschappelijke publicaties, maar het duurt lang voor die zijn gepubliceerd en voor de betrokkenheid van de participanten is directe terugkoppeling van de resultaten belangrijk.

Serieus 

Het succes van een Citizen Science project staat of valt bij de communicatie en vooral dialoog met de deelnemers. Daardoor worden projecten tijdrovend en daarmee ook niet per se kostenbesparend. Uit alle ervaringen bleek vooral dat deelnemers serieus willen worden genomen door de betrokken wetenschappers. Ze willen zelf iets opsteken van het project, het idee hebben dat ze zinvol bezig zijn en dat ze bijdragen aan de wetenschap. Het project moet ze dus ook iets teruggeven. Verder blijkt telkens weer dat tien procent van de mensen negentig procent van het werk doet.

Panorama

Met de verschillende perspectieven werd op deze middag een breed panorama geschetst van Citizen Science projecten. Het werd wel duidelijk dat ze een rol kunnen spelen in de wetenschap, maar minder waaruit die nu precies zou moeten bestaan. Met de lancering van het platform en andere initiatieven kregen we wel de boodschap mee dat we in de nabije toekomst nog veel meer Citizen Science kunnen verwachten, zeker als het aan de KNAW ligt.

Deze blog verscheen eerder op historici.nl

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dinsdag 21 juni 2016 - 17:04

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Networks, boundaries, communities in early modern letters

Letters were one of the main means of communication in early modern times and many correspondences have survived in private and public archives. Historians have long recognized the value of letters for history, so many of these correspondences have been edited in source publications since the nineteenth century. There are exchanges of letters in many fields of life including political correspondences between officials, letters between scientists and religious exchanges between clergy (catholic and protestant) en cultural correspondence between various types of artists. Recently, the promise of the digital collection of correspondences for the study of the exchange of ideas has been explored in several international projects about the republic of letters and the circulation of knowledge.¹
The republic of letters as an 'imagined community' of scientist was supposedly in existence in the seventeenth and eighteenth century and there has been much debate as to how much of a real borderless community it actually constituted. For political correspondences the case was clearly very different, as these involved realms with real borders and relations of authority and political friendships and enmities, but also family power networks.² Apart from the obvious cases of science and politics there are many more networks and communities in the cultural realm, in religion but also in that of trade and of course family business.
In the digital compilations of the last decades, the emphasis in the communications within especially the scientific community has been on the reconstruction of social networks. This is difficult because of two inherent properties of correspondences of one person:

• - one person is usually part of different realms and may write about different subjects in a single letter; this may complicate the analysis of the extent of his correspondence
• - the main character of the correspondence is (logically) at its center. Even a cumulative reconstruction of correspondence networks tends to consist of a number of more or less overlapping circles.
• These two properties are illustrated by the visualization in figure 1 that gives an impression of the political and literary parts of the network of Constantijn Huygens, a seventeenth century Dutch civil servant, literary author and scholar. There are less literary correspondents than political, but the networks are mostly apart; the people whose names are in maroon appear in both networks are only a minority and they tend to be the ones with whom Huygens wrote most anyway (and about all subjects), among whom his employers and his family.³

fig 1. Overlapping political (blue) and literary (orange) networks of

Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687). 

Names of people appearing in both networks in maroon

In the context of communities, boundaries and identifications, these properties are much less of a limitation. Here, the 'reach' of a correspondence of a single person and the entanglement of different realms can throw light on the nature and boundaries of different communities and their mutual interactions. By mapping correspondences on maps where (changing) boundaries and terrain are already shown it becomes possible to assess and visualize the influence of political and physical boundaries for the exchange of information in different realms of life and, by using correspondences from different periods, the changes over time in the boundaries of the communities and the extent of the connections.
For an example of such a change, William I of Orange started out as a prince in the sixteenth century Habsburg empire under emperor Charles V, but later turned the leader of the Dutch Revolt against Philip II. In his correspondence this is evident by a change in his correspondents who were predominantly German before severing the ties with Philip II and an orientation to a number of different partners after 1572, when the revolt had really taken off. Only the correspondence with members of his family showed continuity throughout the period. Apart from communications about his political affairs and patronage, the correspondence also contains letters about the management of his family and economic affairs.⁴ Like the correspondence of William of Orange, the exchange of letters between different parts of the Habsburg empire is also an indication of the strength of association between its constituent states and polities.
Methodologically the sending and reception places of the letters can be plotted onto maps. The number of letters that is exchanged is an indication of the strength of association and is used for drawing network graphs. This is not new in itself, but it is when combined with different 'layers' of communities and the shifts over time. This can be accomplished by using the metadata of the letters, that are in many cases available or can be made available by curating data from the digitized correspondences, using existing indexes. In addition, the letters may be used to assess several other characteristics of the communities in which they were used for communication:

• the language in which the letters were written shows the language of communication in a realm. For science, this was Latin, but the vernacular was used for other international contacts in the early modern period. For example, the correspondence of William of Orange contains letters in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Latin and Spanish and apparently this is the case for most of the political correspondences of the time. In the eighteenth century, however, international diplomatic communications were mainly in French.
• Letters give an indication for the means and the speed of communication in a certain realm. While there have been some studies of the postal services, it is not clear if there were differences between different realms of life - whether political correspondences was exchanged faster than scientific letters for example and neither do we know if there were shifts over time from the 16^th to the 18^th centuries. This may be derived from the time lapse between letters from an exchanges of letters between two individual correspondents (and their differences and shifts over time). In addition the letters contains some indications, that may be harvested by using linguistic tools and text mining techniques
• There have been experiments with the exchange of ideas and the circulation of knowledge, using text mining.⁵ This has proven to be quite a challenge, not in the least because this is multilingual material but as tools improve the results will likely improve as well.

1 See http://republicofletters.stanford.edu/; http://ckcc.huygens.knaw.nl ; http://dalembert.academie-sciences.fr/ ; for a much broader 'union catalogue of early modern letters' see Early Modern Letters Online at http://emlo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk;a list of 'Some Sources for Early Modern Letters' from humanists is available at http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/research/projects/scaliger/sources-for-early-modern-letters/

2 See for this last for example Luc Duerloo, Dynasty and Piety: Archduke Albert (1598-1621) and Habsburg Political Culture in an Age of Religious Wars, (London, 2013); Francesco Benigno, “Der Adel in den Italienischen Provinzen der Spanischen Monarchie im 17. Jahrhundert”, in: Ronald G. Asch Der europäische Adel im Ancien Regime. Von der Krise der ständischen Monarchien bis zur Revolution (ca.1600-1789, (Cologne, Vienna, 2007), 385-406; Anna Maria Rao and Stainar Supphelen “Power Elites and Dependent Territories” in: Wolfgang Reinhard (ed.), Power Elites and State Building, (Oxford, 1996), 79-99

3 Data on bases of the Constantijn Huygens correspondence as included in the epistolarium at ckcc.huygens.knaw.nl.

4 Rik Hoekstra, “Correspondentie totaal. Patronen en trends in de briefwisseling van Willem van Oranje”, Eef Dijkhof, Michel van Gent (red.), Uit diverse bronnen gelicht. Opstellen aangeboden aan Hans Smit ter gelegenheid van zijn vijfenzestigste verjaardag, (The Hague, 2007), 117-131, pp. 127-129, also available at https://www.academia.edu/1340538/Correspondentie_totaal_patronen_en_trends_in_de_briefwisseling_van_Willem_van_Oranje

5 See for example http://ckcc.huygens.knaw.nl

Nederland uit de verte

Op 17-19 februari bezocht ik de Workshop Migration, Mobility and Conncection in Sydney over het behoud van gezamenlijk cultureel erfgoed van Nederlands-Australische migranten van na de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Het erfgoed staat hier niet centraal, maar als onderdeel van de workshop brachten we een bezoek aan het Holland House in Smithfield, feitelijk een buitenwijk van Sydney. Het Holland House verkoopt Nederlandse producten in Australië. Het functioneert ook als een Nederlands centrum en wil daarom Nederlands lijken en dat is het onderwerp van deze blog. Ik denk niet dat er veel Nederlanders zouden zijn die het Holland House als typisch Nederlands zouden omschrijven. Het wordt natuurlijk vooral gerund door mensen uit de Nederlands-Australische migrantengemeenschap, hoewel velen het Nederlands niet machtig zijn of schroom hebben het te spreken omdat ze dat niet meer doen sinds 'ze een kleine jongen van twaalf' waren.

Het Holland House is heel onromantisch gesitueerd op een soort bedrijventerrein, al heet de straat Marketstreet en is de loods waarin ze zijn gevestigd aan de voorkant gesierd met een bordkartonnen, kitscherige Zaanse gevel, compleet met een getekend manspersoon in ketelpak voor het bovenraam. De gevel heeft een vervreemdend effect, omdat hij zo uit de toon valt in de verder nogal zakelijke omgeving met non-descripte bedrijfsvestigingen. Het House is een commerciële instelling en heeft een winkel ('t Winkeltje) met allerlei Nederlandse spullen. Bij binnenkomst staan er direct schappen vol kilozakken drop, stroopwafels, jodenkoeken, cake, pannenkoekenmeel en het volledige (traditionele) assortiment potten Hak. Ook zijn er volop rood-wit-blauwe vlaggen en oranje supporterskledij. Qua assortiment lijkt dit nog het meest op een local products vestiging op Schiphol met souvernirs voor reizigers die Nederland verlaten.

Achter de winkel bevindt zich een (impressie van een) bruin Amsterdams café ('klein Mokum') compleet met perzische tapijten op en onder de tafels en een kloeke donkerbuine bar zoals je ze in het wild in Amsterdam nauwelijks meer aantreft. Met de lunch kregen we er kroketten en erwtensoep (maar ook quiche). Voorbij het café was de meubelafdeling, vol met grootvaders stoelen en klop-klop eikenhouten dressoirs zoals er nog een bij mijn schoonouders in de kamer staat, maar waarvan de Brabantse fabriek wegens gewijzigde publiekssmaak enkele jaren geleden definitief over de kop is gegaan.

In een belendend zaaltje huisde de Dutch Australian Cultural Centre (DACC), het eigenlijke doel van het bezoek. Het DACC heeft onder meer een archief van de Nederlands-Australische gemeenschap en het heeft een deels permanente, deels wisselende tentoonstelling voor geïnteresseerden in de Nederlandse achtergrond van de migranten. Vooral migranten op leeftijd houden het draaiend, en we werden bij binnenkomst gedreigd met een 'typisch Nederlandse mattenklopper' als we ons niet zouden gedragen. Ik heb een jaar of tien geleden in Nederland nog eens gepoogd een mattenklopper te bemachtigen, maar dat is met toen niet gelukt. In het permanente deel van de tentoonstelling staat een enorme maquette met Amsterdamse grachtjes, er staat een miniatuur windmolen, wat poppen in klederdracht en een soldaat in archaïsch uniform, KLM-huisjes en een tijdelijke tentoonstelling van (lege) Bolsflessen. Aan de muren hangen posters – een Landmacht poster met een foto van de bevrijding van Maastricht en verder reproducties van VOC kaarten van de Westkust van Australië die op de route naar Batavia lag. De kaarten zijn gescand en geprint uit een archief of bibliotheek, maar de meeste ervan staan bij gebrek aan expositie ruimte achterstevoren in een hoek op de grond. Sinterklaas is niet vertegenwoordigd, mede wegens de discussie over het uiterlijk van Zwarte Piet die ook hier is doorgedrongen en voor verwarring in de migrantengemeenschap zorgt. In een migrantenmuseum elders in Australië hebben ze Piet als pop maar helemaal zonder hoofd opgesteld. Het archiefmateriaal met overgedragen archieven van allerlei Nederlands-Australische migrantenorganisaties zit bij ruimtegebrek in dozen die deels onder de maquette van de grachtjes staan.

Wat mij bij dit korte bezoek vooral opviel was het beeld van Nederland dat wordt gekoesterd onder migranten die (ooit) van Nederland naar Australië kwamen. Dat beeld weerspiegelt niet niet 'de' achtergrond van de migranten die uit heel verschillende delen van Nederland kwamen en ook uit heel verschillende tijden, van kort na de Tweede Wereldoorlog tot in de jaren tachtig een tijd waarin Nederland snel veranderde. Het is niet alleen gedateerd maar doet ook geconstrueerd aan en komt grotendeels overeen met dat van de Holland propaganda, met molens, grachten en klederdrachten die niemand meer draagt. Het wijkt maar weinig af van de voorpagina's van Lonely Planet of Rough Guides over Nederland, minus de trendy places to go en modern architecture secties dan. Misschien het opvallendst is de afwezigheid van de migranten zelf in foto's of memoriabilia. Tijdens de workshop werd vaak verzucht dat Nederlandse Australiërs onzichtbare migranten zijn en opgegaan in Australische samenleving. Ik kan dat slecht beoordelen maar het beeld van Nederland dat ze oproepen is meer een beeld van Nederland uit de verte dan ze zich zelf zullen realiseren.

Rik Hoekstra

maart 2015

links:

Workshop: http://dhrg.uws.edu.au/migration/

Holland House (alleen facebook) https://www.facebook.com/hollandhousesydney

Dutch Australian Cultural Centre http://dacc.com.au/

It seems as if we are at the beginning of an age in which many more internet accessible data will be coupled. While this is an exiting development that may add a lot of value to resources. It will only succeed only if we follow sound principles. The main danger is the propagation of errors because the same data are included in different settings.

Inclusion is not neutral. It may imply appropriation of material that is created by someone else. But it also gives a stamp of approval to the data included. The new resource may again be included in other mashups or compilations. This makes the principal source invisible. It is often inevitable to combine sources of mixed reliability, if only because they are the only resources available or accessible.

Jon Udell has written some guidelines:

1. Be the authoritative source for your own data

2. Pass by reference not by value

3. Know the difference between structured and unstructured data

4. Create and adopt disciplined naming conventions

5. Push your data to the widest appropriate scope

6. Participate in pub/sub networks as both a publisher and a subscriber

7. Reuse components and services

crash course on dutch history

Eindelijk een korte cursus Nederlandse geschiedenis op het web, waarin Nederlanders zich kunnen herkennen! Of was het nou crass curse

(historical) people on the web

Many people search their family and ancestors on the web. And there is a remarkable amount of genealogical information available. As we go further back in time, , most people did not end up in records, perhaps only when they worn born or died. And if they did, most of the papers were thrown away or got lost. For a superficial observer, it would seem that before the world was only populated by celebrities and other remarkable people.

I don't look for my ancestors, but for a part of my research into the history of the Spanish Empire, I needed to look up a whole host of people: the Spanish vice-roys under Habsburg rule (from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth-century). They were all nobles, and before I started, I figured a lot would be known about them. Remarkably enough, they have not been studied very much, even if they were ranking second only after the king. They were officially even his replacement in a kingdom when he was absent. As a group, they have(to my knowledge) never been studied, though there are some studies about viceroys in specific territories (especially the New World). There were many territories of Europe and oversees involved. For Mexico and Peru (the only vice-royalties to the eighteenth centuries), lists of viceroys could easily be found. The same is true for the viceroys of Naples and Sicily (even though Spannish rule there was subject to changes) and for the Netherlands. But there were also vice-royalties in territories of Spain itself.

It proved hard to find these people with traditional, paper, means as many publications were old and had never had any wide-scale distributions. Here, the web came to the rescue, with the growing amount of digitized books (als obscure books) in programs like Google Books. Also, many wikipedia (and other sites) contain revived older paper research. This material needs to be treated with caution, as much of is old and contains mistakes. It is also hard to find, even on the web, because titles vary and there are no standardized terms under which they have made available. Where I wrote viceroyalties, they were not always called exactly that, but also governors or 'landvoogd' in the case of the Habsburg territories in the low countries (some would probably object to my calling them viceroys).

After some searching, I found lists for all viceroyalties, mostly on wikipedias, but also on other sites. The individuals were less easy to find. The most famous have been the subject of biographies, or other historical monographs. New World viceroys were all described in greater or lesser detail. And fortunately they were all nobles of distinguished families, many of whose genealogies have been published in digital form.

Many of these descriptions are to be found on wikipedia. But when you start using the material, there appears to be not one, but many wikipedia. All languages have their own wikipedia. The English language is the biggest, but the Spanish. German, French and Dutch are quite large too. There contents overlap, but are by no means the same. Sometimes there is information about a person in Italian, but not in Spanish or English. Sometimes the German entry about a person is much more detailed and better checked than the English one. For people with a local importance, it is usually advisable to check the wikipedia version of the country concerned (for portuguese viceroy the portuguese, for example). Sometimes, and entry in one language is shorter, but contains useful links or references. Combining wikipedias (and other sources) is necessary for best results.

There is another point that has to be taken into account. Information in all wikipedia entries is very often outdated and contains mistakes. Sometimes these are mistakes taken directly from the old reference works used for compiling the entries. Hardly ever newer insights from historical research have not been taken into account. From an analytical point of view, it is stepping back a few decades. Finding information is often intricate if you have to use full-text search, as vocabularies change and vary and in my case many different languages were involved. Search engines will not search anything different than you typed in and words but also names differ from one language to another. Searching for nobility is further complicated because their names vary and sometimes they were called by there noble title rather than their family name.

For interpretation and context using modern historiography is indispensible. This will be much harder to find on the web than factual information. Even literature guides are hard to find and bibliographies are increasingly considered old-fashioned. Perhaps programs like Google books will give more insight when they include more research, but they are still heavily biased toward works in English and with so many works available you have to know what you are searching for. Journal articles are not included in these programs and it is very hard to judge up which journals Google scholar contains. There is no single source for journal material for the humanities anyway. All solutions and providers are partial, and certainly not accessible in a uniform way. Access may vary with the computer you happen to work on; home access is usually much more restricted than services at work.

In conclusion, in my experience using the web, more specifically Wikipedia, for research into people can be very productive. But, always check your sources and be aware that all information is taken from somewhere else, often literally from old, sometimes very old reference works.